A little art

Image originally uploaded by leap-of-faith

This is so much better than Pokemon cards -- handmade Artist Trading Cards that you or your kids can DIY and then swap with friends. Size guidelines, cool ideas and pictures here. Good for cabin fever, using up paper and fabric scraps, filling boring meetings, stretching the mind, sharing creativity.

Gracias, Rethinking Education newsletter.

I've never felted this way before

The Unknown Kid models giant bucket hat, pre-felting

I finished a hat for myself on the ride to Houston. It's a tad large right now but it's going to be felted as soon as I overcome my trepidation. I've only ever felted things on accident -- a handknit wool diaper soaker, a couple of wool hats, and, most tragically, the alpaca hat I knitted for Hombre's Christmas present. You toss something like that into the kitchen laundry hamper, you can't complain when you end up with an expensive felt bowl. Based on those adventures, I'm concerned that this new hat will felt unevenly or shrink to baby-yarmulke size. If anyone has any felting advice for the nervous novice, lay it on me, please.

Say, what am I gonna do with all that junk?*

Texans who hate junk mail, make a paperless note: The Lege holds a public hearing tomorrow on a proposed Do Not Junk-Mail registry for Texas. Direct marketers might be displeased, but I'm pretty happy. I have better things to do than sort through all that paper, make sure it gets recycled, and shred the stuff that comes with my personal info conveniently built in.

Yes, I've done the DMA opt-out lists and called many senders directly to be removed from their rosters, and that's cut down on some of the junk. But some of these marketers are hard to locate. Not only that, I'm still getting junk mail -- including credit-card offers -- for people who lived in this house no more recently than four years ago, which makes me wonder if someone at my old address might someday take out a line of credit on my behalf.

The Center for a New American Dream has been active on this issue. Here's their info on tomorrow's hearing, should you be willing and able to make it:

Please arrive at the hearing by 1:30pm
Feb. 27th
Business and Industry Committee Public Hearing Room
1100 Congress Ave
Austin, TX

They've also conveniently created a way to help for those of us who can't testify in person. You can tell your tales of junk-mail woe here and they'll be sent to your State Rep and Senator. Please check to see if your Rep is on the Business and Industry Committee, and if so make extra sure to voice your view.

A zillion trees, a bunch of landfills, and millions of overwhelmed Texan postal customers will thank you.


*Curse the senders, throw it in the green bin, and try to get that stinking Black Eyed Peas song out of my head.

Aw, Jesus Camp

It's a miracle: I've actually seen two of the documentaries nominated for Oscars this year: An Inconvenient Truth and Jesus Camp. Truth I saw in the theater long ago; Jesus Camp, I watched with Hombre last week. It was eye-opening, the details were sharp and telling, and it had the best camera work of any documentary I've seen.

It was entertaining: Ted Haggard made an arrogant ass of himself onscreen talking to one of the kids, and that's not even getting into the layers of meaning that his post-shoot scandal adds to his appearance. It was mind-blowing: Watching Pastor Becky pray for the smooth functioning of her PowerPoint presentation was something else. It was, in places, absolutely repulsive: Watching a grown man tape children's mouths shut with the word "life" during an anti-choice camp rally made me want to scream.

But I didn't come away with the sense that this camp or its alumni will bring down the country, because one stat took the air out of the filmmakers' thesis for me. Early on, we see that the featured kids are homeschoolers of the stereotypically religious sort. I know those folks are out there, although that's not the crowd I run with. I figured I was about to learn a lot. Then a stat flashed onscreen saying that 75% of American homeschoolers are Evangelical Christians*, and my bullshit meter started pinging.

I've been studying, reading and homeschooling for many years now, and the one fact that has always struck me is that there are no accurate national statistics on homeschoolers. Why not? Some states keep records, others do not, depending on how they classify home education. It's not like census data. There are estimates, but no hard national numbers on how many kids learn outside schools, let alone the religious affiliation of us all. This is fine with me. I feel no more compelled to answer to the state for my educational philosophy or religion than I do for the workings of my uterus. But the situation does make statistical claims about homeschoolers fairly suspect, especially when you know that some homeschoolers categorically decline to participate in voluntary surveys on the subject.

Maybe, I thought, I'd missed some new data. I searched around, and while I came across other viewers who wondered where the 75% figure had come from, I didn't find a source for it, either via searches or on the film's website. The closest thing I found was a statement from Tim Lambert of the Texas Home School Coalition saying that about 75% of Texas homeschoolers are Evangelicals. I'll gladly assume that 75% of his group's members are Evangelical, since THSC is an explicitly Christian organization. But not all Texas homeschoolers are THSC members, and Texas doesn't collect homeschooler data. Beyond that, it would be a big leap to extrapolate Texas data to the nation.

As much as I learned from Jesus Camp, and as mind-blowing and disturbing as the story was on its own, that stat gave me pause. It didn't add anything to the film except a shot of misleading fear for viewers who don't know anything about homeschooling beyond what they saw onscreen. Tonight, I'll be rooting for An Inconvenient Truth.



*Hippie-Unitarian/Christian addenda: Homeschool issues aside, I thought the film painted Evangelicals with too broad a brush as well. The same stat that implied that 75% of homeschoolers are like those in the film also implied that all Evangelicals speak in tongues, roll on the floor during worship services, and use the tactics of Pastor Becky and her flock.

This is Texas

The old abandoned Intel building was imploded downtown this morning. The Statesman has a short video here. The implosion is nice and all, but the background commentary makes this the essence of the Texan ethos.

Cleaner air, now less long-winded

TXU's proposed coal-fired electric plants were shaping up to be the bane of Texans with lungs -- and me. I've been working on a coal-plant post in my mind for days -- weeks, really. Every time I sit down to write, something changes -- either SC Gwynne has written a thought-provoking piece on the factors going into Texas' power mess, or Rick Perry's been slapped down in his fast-tracking efforts on TXU's behalf, or something else catches my eye and I add it to the collection of shiny things upon which, given the time, I'll bloviate.

But according to the New York Times, KKR may have just solved my problem -- and yours, too, if you breathe air in or near Texas:

Under a proposed $45 billion buyout by a team of private equity firms, the TXU Corporation, a Texas utility that has long been the bane of environmental groups, will abandon plans to build eight of 11 coal plants and commit to a broad menu of environmental measures, according to people involved in the negotiations.

[...]

The result, after more than 12 hours of negotiations, was an about-face from the company’s earlier approach to climate-change issues. It included a goal of returning the carbon-dioxide emissions by TXU to 1990 levels by 2020.

Environmentalists said yesterday that they had never known of a financial deal to have such an ambitious built-in environmental component.

Considering that TXU's stance up to this point was, Do it our way or we take our ball and invest our resources outside of Texas, this is welcome news.

There are still issues surrounding power in Texas: conservation needs a serious boost here, and the state will definitely need more power in the not-too-distant future. But now perhaps we can having our electricity without choking on it.

Rocketboy in his element

F-1 engine for the Saturn V rocket, Johnson Space Center, Texas

If you wondered why the wind seemed to carry the sound of overjoyed snorts the past couple of days, it was because Rocketboy's eighth birthday coincided with Space Center Houston's homeschool overnight program. I think it was a good gift.

Rocketboy and Hurricanehead saw friends, took a tram tour of the Johnson Space Center, played games, operated simulators, watched movies, built rockets both real and virtual, and romped in a three-story-tall playscape with an elevator and remote-control Mars rovers. Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan happened by the first evening, and R'boy got to ask Cernan a question during his presentation.

But the highlight of the trip? I don't call him Rocketboy for nothing. This kid has worshiped rockets since toddlerhood and has a special place in his heart for the Saturn V. He has a tiny Saturn V model in his room. He's done a series of increasingly large crayon drawings of the Saturn V for a talent show next month. I've been hearing about the stages of the Saturn V for years now as he learned them from a book about the Apollo program.

Well, guess what's in a great big hangar at Rocket Park?

Saturn V.

Happy birthday, son.

I wanted to live in this restroom

Xcaret, Mexico, November 2006

I try not to be fussy about public restrooms because life is short and children have small bladders. But even with my laid-back attitude toward facilities for the masses, I had never found a ladies' room that I wanted to make my home until last fall.

I've been holding off posting this photo because Hombre shakes his head whenever he sees it. What kind of nut takes photos of the john? But look at this. It's open to sunlight, fresh air and birdsong, it's beautifully landscaped and there's no moldy potpourri or graffiti in sight.

A hammock, a few throw pillows and a hibachi, and you'd be all set.

Warning: contains 'scrotum'

The Newbery isn't the only award given out at this time of year.

By now you've almost certainly heard the shrieks and gasps emanating from the easily scandalized over this year's Newbery Award-winning children's book, The Higher Power of Lucky. Why? Because the book contains the word 'scrotum' and therefore must be banned from school libraries.

Never mind that roughly half the attendees of any given school likely possess scrota, and never mind that 'scrotum' is a handy, accurate name to describe a body part. The word makes some people uncomfortable and must be silenced.

Who, exactly, is discomfited by this word? Not my boys, both of whom knew what to call their scrota (or 'scrotes,' for short) by the time they were two. What was I supposed to do, make something up? So far, knowing the correct term for a part of their own bodies hasn't shattered their ability to function in the world. If you didn't know better, you'd think they were normal children and not strange beings who know what their nutsacks are called.

But some adults, who have had much longer to get used to the idea of testicles than children have, can't deal. I'd say they're on the extreme end of the sensitivity spectrum. Even my beloved perinatologist, pointing out the parts of one of my fetuses during an ultrasound years ago, said 'scrotum.' Oh sure, you may think, that's all fine and well for a medical guy. But he had his issues, too. He pointed out my son's little "wiener and scrotum" on the monitor. But see? Even a guy who had trouble saying 'penis' to a woman who was looking at a live image of one and who'd obviously had an encounter with one could still manage to say 'scrotum' without fainting, cracking up, or breaking into a lascivious dance.

Would that more public-school librarians were made of such stuff. Quoth a male school librarian in the NYT article linked above: “If I were a third- or fourth-grade teacher, I wouldn’t want to have to explain that.”

He could always do what my teachers did and send me to the dictionary to look it up. Unless we're not saying 'dictionary' now because, you know.

Another school librarian in the Times story explained her stance this way:

“I don’t want to start an issue about censorship,” she said. “But you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature.”

“At least not for children,” she added.

I'm glad she clarified that, although clearly this woman is unfamiliar with Jackie Collins' oeuvre and is not to be trusted to make these judgment calls. And it's not like the book is referring to a grown man's junk, either, or even a boy's. No, the scrotum in the book, the one causing all the panic and debate, is attached to a dog -- a dog who got snakebit on that particular part.

Do you know what I find shocking and scandalous about all of this? That any, let alone many, of the public-school children of our nation are being guided by full-grown adults who are freaked out by dog balls. I weep for my country and its countless, nameless scrota.

A very hoppy, not-at-all-political Valentine's Day

This is Hank. He's our brand-new bunny, adopted from another homeschooling family. He's neutured, he's chipper, he's got undercoat to spare. Hank lost his sweetie to a snakebite a while back; regular readers know that Easter Beagle lost her pal Woodstock to fire ants last Halloween. Hank's former mama and I decided this new pairing might be good for both of them.

And it may be, eventually. Hank (nee Marshmallow, a.k.a. "Bunny") is apparently from more mannered stock than our feisty little Easter Beagle. After letting them moon at each other in nearby crates all afternoon, I decided to release them into the wild of the study for a little meet and greet.

Easter Beagle soon hopped over to Hank, grabbed his rump with her forepaws, and nipped him. This blew Hank's mind. He took off like a shot, leaving behind enough molted hair to make a third bunny.

Clearly, this was not what he expected.

E.B. made a couple more passes only to get punched in the nose, and I had to separate them before things got feral. But I expect that in a few days or a couple of weeks they'll reach some sort of understanding. That seems to be the way these things go.

I wish I'd had Hank's nose-punching moves back when I was a sweet young thing. Hell, I wish John Edwards had them now. But I digress. This post is not about the disproportionate voice granted to marginalized right-wing shills by the mainstream press, and it's certainly not about the completely unacceptable, ferocious hatred that's been poured on Amanda and Melissa in response to their history of exercising their First Amendment rights as independent writers. It's about bunnies, damn it -- cute, uncomplicated, widely appealing, and not at all concerned with having a real, brass-tacks conversation about anything. Which is apparently the way we like it around here.

Lalalalala. Bunnies, people. I'm calling 2008 now for bunnies.

Yes, we've got worms!

A victory garden update

Bromeliad greenhouse, Xcaret, Mexico

The boys and I took this sunny afternoon to pull the rabbit tractor out of one of our raised beds and turn the soil. The beds were here when we moved in about two and a half years ago, and the soil was so gray, dusty and lifeless that I found it frightening. But let me tell you, compost, fish emulsion and rabbit poop can do an extreme makeover on barren soil. I was delighted to find fat, juicy-looking earthworms in that dirt today. (Perhaps this explains the pudgy robins that have been bouncing all over the yard lately.) The soil is healthy, black, moist and ready for onion sets.

The blueberries survived our little cold snap last month. One bush even got cocky and leafed out this week. Last week, though, the berry bed was filled with loathsome fire ants. I sprayed with a strong mixture of liquid seaweed, fish emulsion and horticultural molasses, and the ants cleared out overnight. Apparently ants don't like molasses, or maybe they were turned off by the gag-inducing fish-emulsion stench, which repels people as effectively as it attracts dogs. I'm not naive enough to think the ants have left forever, of course. They're probably under the mower shed, sharpening their fangs and trying to out-evolve whatever drove them from "their" berry bed.

I can't recall if I mentioned this, but I finally bowed to the peachtree borer reality and took out the peach trees altogether. I plan to replace them with fruit with fewer pests in this area: figs, apples and pears. But in doing a little innocent research, I have gone down the rabbit hole of apple varieties and may emerge in time to order plants for next spring.

Carrot and lettuce seedlings are up and should withstand any remaining freezes. Chives, culinary sage and oregano are still doing their bit. Dandelions, which are not a weed at all but an emergency salad green and a tasty snack for bunnies, are in full bloom. And they require nothing in the way of cultivation. Take that, bagged salad.

Please do not feed the singing puppets

We're in the emergency room Friday afternoon -- Hurricanehead, Rocketboy, and I. Hurricanehead has a lump the size of a hotdog bun on his head and Rocketboy is crying, too, because he didn't look before he swung the bat at the tee, and I am scared and frayed.

The nurse shows us into an exam room and invites us to watch the TV mounted on a high bracket in the corner. Rocketboy pleads for cartoons; I want him to stop moaning so I reach up -- way up -- for the power button.

What diversion and enlightenment does the surfeit of television programs offer to a tired, upset, injured family? File footage of Anna Nicole Smith on every goddamned channel I click through, except one. Kudlow something on one of the news channels features five talking heads crammed onto the blue screen, like face cards in a very loud, agitated game of Solitaire. One jack shouts, "If those girls had used the 'n word,' they would've been fired!"

I turn the TV off. Rocketboy howls.

"Look," I tell him, "This is all garbage. I can't find any cartoons, my arm is numb, and I don't care to watch a friend get trashed on national TV."

Two dinosaur stickers, one fresh ice pack, and a chat with the kindly, tattooed, dinosaur-enthusiast ER doctor later, we are spared a CT scan but told to wait half an hour just in case any problems develop. On his way out, Doc reaches up and flips on the TV for the kids.

"Thanks," I say, reflexively.

"Mom!" Rocketboy reminds me, "I thought you didn't want to see your friend get trashed on national TV!"

Doc's eyes flick briefly to Smith footage onscreen, then to me, eyebrows slightly raised. I am not about to try to explain.

"Okay," he says, and lets himself out.

Hombre arrives. He finds cartoons without losing feeling in his channel-changing arm, and the boys watch singing puppets until we're cleared to leave.*

I left television news a dozen years ago for the reasons I largely avoid it today: lazy reporting, coverage based on what the competition is doing rather than what's truly newsworthy, the amped-up pillorying of all and sundry based on the need to fill time. So much money, human effort, and technology, and all television could offer Friday afternoon was a dead celebrity and a pack of right-wing shills. And singing puppets, but I repeat myself.



*Hurricanehead is doing much better now. His lump is mostly gone, he's playing and raising hell again and sleeping okay. We'll be watching him closely for the next few days, though. And the bats are on hiatus.

So what do you do all day?

Sometimes it's hard to say.

I often flail myself with the notion that I only think I have a lot to do but I'm actually just inept at managing my time. Surely wiping noses, reading stories, wrangling pets and cleaning up biohazards on a few hours of broken sleep can't take that much time and energy. I should have plenty of time left over to renovate the flower beds, paint the bedrooms and write well-researched blogly masterpieces daily.

The flailing stops now. I bought a pedometer last week. Yesterday -- a drizzly day inhospitable to outside time -- I walked 4.73 miles without leaving home. I need a cookie and a nap, followed by a night out and a glass of wine.

Have a good weekend. I sort of promise to return on Monday.

Thinking about Rethinking

My favorite educational firebrand, John Taylor Gatto, is the keynote speaker at Rethinking Education this year. I got a lot of grist for the mental mill out of Dumbing Us Down and The Underground History of American Education and I'm eager to hear his presentation, Weapons of Mass Instruction, Why Your Kids Should Not Be in School.

Do I think that all children should not be in school? No. As I've said before, I think public schools are a necessary option -- not all families can swing private or free-range learning, and not all of them want to. But I'm interested in hearing Gatto's current criticisms of school, based on his own quarter-century of teaching. I especially want to see how closely his argument lines up with that of the late John Holt, another veteran educator turned revolutionary.

So I'm looking forward to Labor Day weekend. In the meantime, I love the freedom my boys have to delve deeply into subjects that spark their interest. Hurricanehead has been working on a parrot puzzle off and on all day. Rocketboy spent the morning on a long-term, interdisciplinary project of his own choosing on the Apollo space program. It's pulling together science, art, history, research skills, writing, spelling and presentation-planning. I had nothing to do with it, unless you count showing him how to type quotation marks as something. If I could improve one thing about our free-range learning experience, it would be ready access (walking- or bike-ride-distance) to local art and music. That and immediate, happy compliance with all my edicts, of course.

I'm curious. Regardless of the setting of your child's education, what do you like about the education your child is getting, and what would you improve?

Just impeachy

I'd like to draw some off-the-wall comparison between the ruins of Dzibilchaltun and the mess in our own Executive Branch, but sweet Jesus it's late.

You know how I promised I'd get the Impeachment Toolkit back up? I think it's redundant at this point. 'Stead, I refer you to Ten Reasons to Impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney at Democrats.com, which will send your impudent opinion directly to your Senators and Rep if you so desire. You can also gather signatures and emails offline to submit to the site. And, of course, there's the Impeach Bush Coalition, which has been on the case for quite a while now.

And with that -- having spent the weekend in Dallas visiting assorted nephews and nieces with my own screaming weasels in tow -- I bid you all a good Sunday evening.